The two teenagers who killed 13 people and themselves at suburban Denver's Columbine High School 10 years ago next week weren't in the "Trenchcoat Mafia," disaffected videogamers who wore cowboy dusters. The killings ignited a national debate over bullying, but the record now shows Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold hadn't been bullied — in fact, they had bragged in diaries about picking on freshmen and "fags."

Their rampage put schools on alert for "enemies lists" made by troubled students, but the enemies on their list had graduated from Columbine a year earlier. Contrary to early reports, Harris and Klebold weren't on antidepressant medication and didn't target jocks, blacks or Christians, police now say, citing the killers' journals and witness accounts. That story about a student being shot in the head after she said she believed in God? Never happened, the FBI says now.

A decade after Harris and Klebold made Columbine a synonym for rage, new information — including several books that analyze the tragedy through diaries, e-mails, appointment books, videotape, police affidavits and interviews with witnesses, friends and survivors — indicate that much of what the public has been told about the shootings is wrong.

In fact, the pair's suicidal attack was planned as a grand — if badly implemented — terrorist bombing that quickly devolved into a 49-minute shooting rampage when the bombs Harris built fizzled.

"He was so bad at wiring those bombs, apparently they weren't even close to working," says Dave Cullen, author of Columbine, a new account of the attack.

So whom did they hope to kill?

Everyone — including friends.

What's left, after peeling away a decade of myths, is perhaps more comforting than the "good kids harassed into retaliation" narrative — or perhaps not.

It's a portrait of Harris and Klebold as a sort of In Cold Blood criminal duo — a deeply disturbed, suicidal pair who over more than a year psyched each other up for an Oklahoma City-style terrorist bombing, an apolitical, over-the-top revenge fantasy against years of snubs, slights and cruelties, real and imagined.

Along the way, they saved money from after-school jobs, took Advanced Placement classes, assembled a small arsenal and fooled everyone — friends, parents, teachers, psychologists, cops and judges.

"These are not ordinary kids who were bullied into retaliation," psychologist Peter Langman writes in his new book, Why Kids Kill: Inside the Minds of School Shooters. "These are not ordinary kids who played too many video games. These are not ordinary kids who just wanted to be famous. These are simply not ordinary kids. These are kids with serious psychological problems."

Deceiving the adults

Harris, who conceived the attacks, was more than just troubled. He was, psychologists now say, a cold-blooded, predatory psychopath — a smart, charming liar with "a preposterously grand superiority complex, a revulsion for authority and an excruciating need for control," Cullen writes.

Harris, a senior, read voraciously and got good grades when he tried, pleasing his teachers with dazzling prose — then writing in his journal about killing thousands.

"I referred to him — and I'm dating myself — as the Eddie Haskel of Columbine High School," says Principal Frank DeAngelis, referring to the deceptively polite teen on the 1950s and '60s sitcom Leave it to Beaver. "He was the type of kid who, when he was in front of adults, he'd tell you what you wanted to hear."

When he wasn't, he mixed napalm in the kitchen .

According to Cullen, one of Harris' last journal entries read: "I hate you people for leaving me out of so many fun things. And no don't … say, 'Well that's your fault,' because it isn't, you people had my phone #, and I asked and all, but no. No no no don't let the weird-looking Eric KID come along."

As he walked into the school the morning of April 20, Harris' T-shirt read: Natural Selection.

Klebold, on the other hand, was anxious and lovelorn, summing up his life at one point in his journal as "the most miserable existence in the history of time," Langman notes.

Harris drew swastikas in his journal; Klebold drew hearts.

As laid out in their writings, the contrast between the two was stark.

Harris seemed to feel superior to everyone — he once wrote, "I feel like God and I wish I was, having everyone being OFFICIALLY lower than me" — while Klebold was suicidally depressed and getting angrier all the time. "Me is a god, a god of sadness," he wrote in September 1997, around his 16th birthday.

Klebold also was paranoid. "I have always been hated, by everyone and everything," he wrote.

On the day of the attacks, his T-shirt read: Wrath.

Shooter profiles emerge

Columbine wasn't the first K-12 school shooting. But at the time it was by far the worst, and the first to play out largely on live television.

The U.S. Secret Service and U.S. Education Department soon began studying school shooters. In 2002, researchers presented their first findings: School shooters, they said, followed no set profile, but most were depressed and felt persecuted.

Princeton sociologist Katherine Newman, co-author of the 2004 book Rampage: The Social Roots of School Shootings, says young people such as Harris and Klebold are not loners — they're just not accepted by the kids who count. "Getting attention by becoming notorious is better than being a failure."

The Secret Service found that school shooters usually tell other kids about their plans.

"Other students often even egg them on," says Newman, who led a congressionally mandated study on school shootings. "Then they end up with this escalating commitment. It's not a sudden snapping."

Langman, whose book profiles 10 shooters, including Harris and Klebold, found that nine suffered from depression and suicidal thoughts, a "potentially dangerous" combination, he says. "It is hard to prevent murder when killers do not care if they live or die. It is like trying to stop a suicide bomber."

At the time, Columbine became a kind of giant national Rorschach test. Observers saw its genesis in just about everything: lax parenting, lax gun laws, progressive schooling, repressive school culture, violent video games, antidepressant drugs and rock 'n' roll, for starters.

Many of the Columbine myths emerged before the shooting stopped, as rumors, misunderstandings and wishful thinking swirled in an echo chamber among witnesses, survivors, officials and the news media.

Police contributed to the mess by talking to reporters before they knew facts — a hastily called news conference by the Jefferson County sheriff that afternoon produced the first headline: "Twenty-five dead in Colorado."

A few inaccuracies took hours to clear up, but others took weeks or months — sometimes years — as authorities reluctantly set the record straight.

Former Rocky Mountain News reporter Jeff Kass, author of a new book, Columbine: A True Crime Story, says police played a game of "Open Records charades."

In one case, county officials took five years just to acknowledge that they had met in secret after the attacks to discuss a 1998 affidavit for a search warrant on Harris' home — it was the result of a complaint against him by the mother of a former friend. Harris had threatened her son on his website and bragged that he had been building bombs.

Police already had found a small bomb matching Harris' description near his home — but investigators never presented the affidavit to a judge.

They also apparently didn't know that Harris and Klebold were on probation after having been arrested in January 1998 for breaking into a van and stealing electronics.

The search finally took place, but only after the shootings. ======================================Meticulous planning

What's now beyond dispute — largely from the killers' journals, which have been released over the past few years, is this: Harris and Klebold killed 13 and wounded 24, but they had hoped to kill thousands.

The pair planned the attacks for more than a year, building 100 bombs and persuading friends to buy them guns. Just after 11 a.m. on April 20, they lugged a pair of duffel bags containing propane-tank bombs into Columbine's crowded cafeteria and another into the kitchen, then stepped outside and waited.

Had the bombs exploded, they'd have killed virtually everyone eating lunch and brought the school's second-story library down atop the cafeteria, police say. Armed with a pistol, a rifle and two sawed-off shotguns, the pair planned to pick off survivors fleeing the carnage.

As a last terrorist act, a pair of gasoline bombs planted in Harris' Honda and Klebold's BMW had been rigged apparently to kill police, rescue teams, journalists and parents who rushed to the school — long after the pair expected they would be dead.

The pair had parked the cars about 100 yards apart in the student lot. The bombs didn't go off.

Looking for answers at home

Since 1999, many people have looked to the boys' parents for answers, but a transcript of their 2003 court-ordered deposition to the victims' parents remains sealed until 2027.

The Klebolds spoke to New York Times columnist David Brooks in 2004 and impressed Brooks as "a well-educated, reflective, highly intelligent couple" who spent plenty of time with their son. They said they had no clues about Dylan's mental state and regretted not seeing that he was suicidal.

Could the parents have prevented the massacre? The FBI special agent in charge of the investigation has gone on record as having "the utmost sympathy" for the Harris and Klebold families.

Cullen, who has spent most of the past decade poring over the record, comes away with a bit of sympathy.

For one thing, he notes, Harris' parents "knew they had a problem — they thought they were dealing with it. What kind of parent is going to think, 'Well, maybe Eric's a mass murderer.' You just don't go there."

He got a good look at the boys' writings only in the past couple of years. Among the revelations: Eric Harris was financing what could well have been the biggest domestic terrorist attack on U.S. soil on wages from a part-time job at a pizza parlor.

"One of the scary things is that money was one of the limiting factors here," Cullen says.

Had Harris, then 18, put off the attacks for a few years and landed a well-paying job, he says, "he could be much more like Tim McVeigh," mixing fertilizer bombs like those used in Oklahoma City in 1995. As it was, he says, the fact that Harris carried out the attack when he did probably saved hundreds of lives.

Nicole Katz is a mother and one of 4.3 million Americans who pay annual dues to the National Rifle Association.

She owns two shotguns — one for home protection and the other to defend her place of business.

Each of her three daughters — ages 9, 11 and 15 — has been given gun-safety training. They have gone skeet shooting together. Target practice is fun for the whole Katz family.

However, there are no video games in Katz’s Yorktown home. The kids are not allowed to have televisions in their bedrooms. Or computers.

The middle daughter was denied an iPhone, something she badly wanted for Hanukkah.

“I’m not going to get my kids unlimited Internet access all day long, whenever they want,” Katz said the other day. “I just don’t think it’s a good thing.”

By any modern definition, Katz is a strict, no-nonsense mom.

But she does not believe in stricter gun laws. The hue and cry for legislative action in the wake of the Sandy Hook Elementary School shootings does not shake her resolve — even though the tragedy hit close to home.

Nearly a decade ago, she and her husband, Assemblyman Steve Katz, planned to move to Newtown, Conn.

“We had an accepted offer on a house that we loved and were about to sign off on the paperwork,” she recalled. “I changed my mind at the last minute because it would’ve added a lot of time to my commute.”

It was a fateful decision. Had they made the move, Katz said, “my kids would’ve been in the school on Friday.”

“It’s unfortunate that when a horrendous tragedy like this happens, people tend to act out of emotion instead of thoughtfully considering all the facts,” she said. “It’s easy to blame guns, but that doesn’t address the root cause of the problem.”

She offered the oft-repeated argument that guns don’t kill people, people kill people — and most of the rampage killers are people with mental illnesses.

“Violence has to be treated holistically,” she said. “In the past 20 years, what we’ve seen with these mass shootings is a common thread — they’re all young male loners who were anti-social, disengaged from society. They kept to themselves. Very often, they spent hours alone in their rooms, playing violent video games.”

(Page 2 of 2)These young males, she suggested, were stunted, angry and coiled to kill. What’s needed, she said, is raising the national consciousness so that the warning signs are spotted earlier.

“I know that in our own state, mental health services have been cut,” Katz said. “The parents of these children with psychiatric issues are overwhelmed. They’re not equipped to handle it. They can’t afford to get them the help they need, so it’s a big problem.”

By all accounts, Adam Lanza’s mother, a woman who owned six guns and was living on high alimony payments, certainly had enough financial wherewithal to get her troubled son the best professional care.

“She obviously was aware that her son had mental or behavioral issues and I question why she would not have those weapons secured,” Katz said. “I don’t understand it.”

We may never understand it.

Katz said she supports anyone who wants a gun to get one as long as they pass the required background check, were free of mental illness, broke no laws and passed a safety training test. In light of Sandy Hook, she conceded that a background check should include looking into the mental health history of family members.

New gun restrictions?

“All the gun control legislation in the world is not going to stop a criminal from obtaining guns,” she said.

Katz is fighting against an inexorable tide. It is impossible to see how the massacre of 26 people — 20 of them small children — will pass without a serious review and overhaul of firearm regulations and without an examination of how the widespread availability of guns continues to fatally intersect with mental illness.

Give Katz some credit, though. She is nothing if not consistent. I asked for her opinion because I knew she wouldn’t shy away from the discussion, unlike NRA officials who have suddenly become scarce.

She’s been in the public eye before and fully backed her husband last summer when he held a controversial campaign fundraiser at a security training center where guests were invited to partake in target shooting. The event was held two weeks after the killings at a movie theater in Aurora, Colo.

On Wednesday, Katz went to Woodbury, outside of Newtown.

Word got out that members of the anti-gay, anti-Semitic Westboro Baptist Church were planning to picket the funeral of Dawn Hochsprung, the Sandy Hook principal. Presumably, Westboro’s venomous aim was to declare that the shootings were God’s retribution for the sins of gay marriage, or something like that.

It seems that only bilious fools can provide certain answers to the mystery of evil.

On her Facebook page, Katz offered to take anyone along who would help her provide a “human shield” to block the Westboro crackpots from the view of people attending the funeral.

At the end of the day, the picketers did not show up. Katz claimed on Facebook that they saw the crowd and backed down.

“We did our job and we did it peacefully,” she said.

These young males, she suggested, were stunted, angry and coiled to kill. What’s needed, she said, is raising the national consciousness so that the warning signs are spotted earlier.

“I know that in our own state, mental health services have been cut,” Katz said. “The parents of these children with psychiatric issues are overwhelmed. They’re not equipped to handle it. They can’t afford to get them the help they need, so it’s a big problem.”

By all accounts, Adam Lanza’s mother, a woman who owned six guns and was living on high alimony payments, certainly had enough financial wherewithal to get her troubled son the best professional care.

“She obviously was aware that her son had mental or behavioral issues and I question why she would not have those weapons secured,” Katz said. “I don’t understand it.”

We may never understand it.

Katz said she supports anyone who wants a gun to get one as long as they pass the required background check, were free of mental illness, broke no laws and passed a safety training test. In light of Sandy Hook, she conceded that a background check should include looking into the mental health history of family members.

New gun restrictions?

“All the gun control legislation in the world is not going to stop a criminal from obtaining guns,” she said.

Katz is fighting against an inexorable tide. It is impossible to see how the massacre of 26 people — 20 of them small children — will pass without a serious review and overhaul of firearm regulations and without an examination of how the widespread availability of guns continues to fatally intersect with mental illness.

Give Katz some credit, though. She is nothing if not consistent. I asked for her opinion because I knew she wouldn’t shy away from the discussion, unlike NRA officials who have suddenly become scarce.

She’s been in the public eye before and fully backed her husband last summer when he held a controversial campaign fundraiser at a security training center where guests were invited to partake in target shooting. The event was held two weeks after the killings at a movie theater in Aurora, Colo.

On Wednesday, Katz went to Woodbury, outside of Newtown.

Word got out that members of the anti-gay, anti-Semitic Westboro Baptist Church were planning to picket the funeral of Dawn Hochsprung, the Sandy Hook principal. Presumably, Westboro’s venomous aim was to declare that the shootings were God’s retribution for the sins of gay marriage, or something like that.

It seems that only bilious fools can provide certain answers to the mystery of evil.

On her Facebook page, Katz offered to take anyone along who would help her provide a “human shield” to block the Westboro crackpots from the view of people attending the funeral.

At the end of the day, the picketers did not show up. Katz claimed on Facebook that they saw the crowd and backed down.

“We did our job and we did it peacefully,” she said.

Logged

"You see, it's not the blood you spill that gets you what you want, it's the blood you share. Your family, your friendships, your community, these are the most valuable things a man can have." Before Dishonor - Hatebreed

"You see, it's not the blood you spill that gets you what you want, it's the blood you share. Your family, your friendships, your community, these are the most valuable things a man can have." Before Dishonor - Hatebreed

Bad things can happen and occassionally do happen in places that allow their citizens the private possession of arms.........Over the last 40 plus years the US has seen approximately 20 mass shootings a year with an average of 100 deaths.........Each tragic, but also statistical anomalies in a nation of 300+ Million people.

The bad things that can happen and occassionally do happen in places that allow their citizens the private possession of arms, however, are vastly eclipsed by the bad things that seem to happen in places where they are denied arms....

'in the 20th century, approximately 281,361,000 unarmed and helpless men, women and children (roughly the same as the number that might die in a nuclear war) were killed by state and quasi-state regimes and non-state groups.'

'At least 800,000 people are estimated to have been killed in the genocide [mostly with cheap $.50 chinese machetes] at a rate - over just 100 days - that was far faster than the Holocaust of the Jews in World War Two.'

The argument folks might make is that genocides do not happen as often as mass shootings........But if we take 800,000 as the death rate of an average genocide, one would realize that there would have to be 40,000 mass shootings to equal one Rwanda genocide, or at the rate of mass shootings in the US, 8,000 years worth of mass shootings at the rate they occur here.

And here's the rub.......An armed American society makes such an event very unlikely........Europeans feel secure that their civil governments will protect them. But in Europe they are facing a massive demographic shift in the next several decades, France has already felt the first tinges of that in recent years, and that will only become worse as their Islamic population reaches critical mass.........'Those who beat their swords in to plowshares often find themselves toiling under the yoke of those who kept their swords.'

Reaching back into our history, it would appear that evil has been around killing in large numbers, larger than those in Sandy Hook, since before psuedo-assault weapons; indeed firearms not required at all:

Seung-Hui Cho, who committed the Virginia Tech massacre in 2007, had been diagnosed with severe anxiety disorder as a child and placed under treatment. But Virginia Tech was prohibited from being told about Cho’s mental health problems because of federal privacy laws. At college, Cho engaged in behavior even more bizarre than the average college student. He stalked three women and, at one point, went totally silent, refusing to speak even to his roommates. He was involuntarily committed to a mental institution for one night and then unaccountably unleashed on the public, whereupon he proceeded to engage in the deadliest mass shooting by an individual in U.S. history.

The 2011 Tucson, Ariz., shopping mall shooter, Jared Loughner, was so obviously disturbed that if he’d stayed in Pima Community College long enough to make the yearbook, he would have been named “Most Likely to Commit Mass Murder.”

One of Loughner’s teachers, Ben McGahee, filed numerous complaints against him, hoping to have him removed from class. “When I turned my back to write on the board,” McGahee said, “I would always turn back quickly — to see if he had a gun.”

On her first day at school, student Lynda Sorensen emailed her friends about Loughner: “We do have one student in the class who was disruptive today, I’m not certain yet if he was on drugs (as one person surmised) or disturbed. He scares me a bit. The teacher tried to throw him out and he refused to go, so I talked to the teacher afterward. Hopefully he will be out of class very soon, and not come back with an automatic weapon.”

The last of several emails Sorensen sent about Loughner said: “We have a mentally unstable person in the class that scares the living cr** out of me. He is one of those whose picture you see on the news, after he has come into class with an automatic weapon. Everyone interviewed would say, Yeah, he was in my math class and he was really weird.”That was the summer before Loughner killed six people at the Tucson shopping mall, including a federal judge and a 9 year-old girl, and critically wounded Rep. Gabrielle Giffords, among others.

Loughner also had run-ins with the law, including one charge for possessing drug paraphernalia — a lethal combination with mental illness. He was eventually asked to leave college on mental health grounds, released on the public without warning.

Perhaps if Carl Grace, Ben McGahee or Lynda Sorensen worked in the mental health field, six people wouldn’t have had to die that January morning in Tucson. But committing Loughner to a mental institution in Arizona would have required a court order stating that he was a danger to himself and others.

Innumerable studies have found a correlation between severe mental illness and violent behavior. Thirty-one to 61 percent of all homicides committed by disturbed individuals occur during their first psychotic episode — which is why mass murderers often have no criminal record. There’s no time to wait with the mentally ill.

James Holmes, the accused Aurora, Colo., shooter, was under psychiatric care at the University of Colorado long before he shot up a movie theater. According to news reports and court filings, Holmes told his psychiatrist, Dr. Lynne Fenton, that he fantasized about killing “a lot of people,” but she refused law enforcement’s offer to place Holmes under confinement for 72 hours.

However, Fenton did drop Holmes as a patient after he made threats against another school psychiatrist. And after Holmes made threats against a professor, he was asked to leave campus. But he wasn’t committed. People who knew he was deeply troubled just pushed him onto society to cause havoc elsewhere.

Little is known so far about Adam Lanza, the alleged Newtown, Conn., elementary school shooter, but anyone who could shoot a terrified child and say to himself, “That was fun — I think I’ll do it 20 more times!” is not all there.

It has been reported that Lanza’s mother, his first victim, was trying to have him involuntarily committed to a mental institution, triggering his rage. If true — and the media seem remarkably uninterested in finding out if it is true — Mrs. Lanza would have had to undergo a long and grueling process, unlikely to succeed.

As The New York Times’ Joe Nocera recently wrote: “Connecticut’s laws are so restrictive in terms of the proof required to get someone committed that Adam Lanza’s mother would probably not have been able to get him help even if she had tried.”

Taking guns away from single women who live alone and other law-abiding citizens without mental illnesses will do nothing about the Chos, Loughners, Holmeses or Lanzas. Such people have to be separated from civil society, for the public’s sake as well as their own. But this is nearly impossible because the ACLU has decided that being psychotic is a civil right.

Consequently, whenever a psychopath with a million gigantic warning signs commits a shocking murder, the knee-jerk reaction is to place yet more controls on guns. By now, guns are the most heavily regulated product in America.

It hasn’t worked.

Even if it could work — and it can’t — there are still subway tracks, machetes, fists and bombs. The most deadly massacre at a school in U.S. history was at an elementary school in Michigan in 1927. It was committed with a bomb. By a mentally disturbed man.

Very good article by Ms Coulter. Incidentally, anyone who has not read the story of the 1927 school bombing really should. really places things in a different light.

Regarding the MEDICAL parts of the 23 executive orders, speaking as both a physician and an avid shooter/combat arms practitioner, there is nothing in the 23 points that goes beyond common sense with the exception possibly of directing the CDC to study gun violence - and that could be fine if done even-handedly and could even be helpful, although I don't trust the CDC to do a balanced analysis on this issue. There is nothing in the wording that states that I as a family practice Dr HAVE to talk about guns, only that I am allowed to (which I do routinely on physical exams, especially for kids - reminding parents to secure arms and teach gun safety only makes sense). It is good to have a clarification that I am under no liability for reporting an obviously dangerous looney to the local PD - I am required to do it for unsafe driving, certainly should for truly obviously psychotic or violent patients. I tell you, living in a small town like I do, if I report such an individual can be a little nerve-wracking! Striving for parity of mental health services with other services is LONG overdue. Overall, I think the executive orders are mostly reasonably balanced. Less draconian than I anticipated. That is being left to Congress, I suppose.

My understanding is that one state (I believe Connecticut) has proposed that all people seeking to purchase a gun need a letter from a doctor stating they are of sound mind. That is nuts and I am opposed to it on multiple practical and theoretical grounds. That is not among the proposed executive orders.

One danger we run into as people defending the 2nd amendment is that there are those who are irrational in their beliefs on both side; when we irrationally attack rational proposals, we feed into the "gun nut" stereotypes. There are a lot of Americans out there with conflicted feelings on this issue. Alienating those who are attempting to be rational with Glenn Beck style rants and half truths doesn't help the cause. Remember that just because we disagree with it does not make a proposal irrational. There can be rational disagreement, in fact our system is built on it. Irrational responses and over-the-top hyperbole just makes gun owners appear to be the paranoid crazies the gun-phobics think we are. They are a lost cause. Its that large middle ground of Americans with mixed feelings on the issue we need to reach and show the light......

I did not have a written reference on the 1927 bombing. I had never heard of it but was flipping through channels and there was a documentary of it, I think on the history channel or similar, it was very well done and went into some depth. Here is an article with a brief outline, but it doesn't capture the horror, and the insanity and cold calculations of the bomber, a 55 yr old farmer upset over taxes.

By the way, assuming I get confirmation of days off (which I should have had 2 days ago) I will be at the camp in No Carolina. I will be in contact to coordinate shipping out some gas powered airsoft replicas of my P99 Walther and Browning hi-power, I'll use one but that leaves 2 for others if they need them. Have matching weapon specific holsters to fit. Train with what you use! I am looking forward to the combat medicine refresher also!

Obama Goes Nuts and OffersAnti-gunners Wish ListMost of his crazy proposals are so extreme,only few of his initiatives pose serious threat

Surrounded by child-props, Barack Obama yesterday proposed a semi-automatic ban so extreme that it could potentially outlaw up to 50% of all long guns in circulation and up to 80% of all handguns.

Originally, Obama's allies had announced they would reintroduce the 1994 ban on commonly-owned, defensive firearms. That was until they found out that they would look like fools, since that semi-auto ban was largely the law of Connecticut on the day the Newtown shooting occurred -- and didn't cover Adam Lanza's AR-15. After that, gun grabbers just kept adding more and more guns until they would register (or ban) a huge percentage of the defensive guns in existence.

So where are we now?

Obama's crazy gun ban is now being denounced by many Democrats. And, although you don't "pop the cork" until Congress adjourns, it will probably take the magazine ban down the toilet with it.

This means that gun owners' focus must now shift to the part of Obama's agenda which poses the most danger because it is most likely to move: the requirement that the government approve every gun transfer in America -- the so-called universal background check.

All of you know why this is a problem. But how do you explain it so simply that even a congressman can understand? Let's take a crack at that:

ONE: THE FBI'S "SECRET LIST" WHICH IS BEING USED TO BAR AMERICANS FROM OWNING GUNS IS INSIDIOUS

The FBI’s database currently contains the names of more than 150,000 veterans. They served their country honorably. They did nothing wrong. But, because they sought counseling for a traumatic experience while risking their lives for America, they have had their constitutional rights summarily revoked, with no due process whatsoever.

You want to know something else? The "secret list" could soon include tens of millions of Americans -- including soldiers, police, and fire fighters -- with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, attention deficit and hyperactivity disorder, and even post-partem depression. This would be achieved under the 23 anti-gun "executive actions" that Obama announced yesterday.

TWO: THE FBI REFUSES TO INSURE US THAT IT ISN'T TURNING ITS "SECRET LIST" INTO A NATIONAL GUN REGISTRY

Our legislative counsel drafted the Smith amendment in 1998 to prohibit the FBI from using the Brady Check system to tax gun buyers or put their names into a gun registry. But the FBI refuses to tell us -- or even to tell U.S. Senators -- how (or whether) it is complying with the Smith amendment. Why in the world should we give the FBI more authority and more names if it abuses the authority it already has?

This is the inherent problem with any background check, where gun buyers’ names are given to a government bureaucrat. Is there any way to make sure that once a name is entered into a computer, that it doesn’t stay there permanently?

This concern is especially valid, considering how federal agents are already skirting the laws against gun owner registration. Several dealers around the country have informed GOA that the ATF is increasingly going into gun shops and just xeroxing all of the 4473's, giving them the names of every gun owner who purchased a gun through that shop -- and setting up the basis for a national registration system.

This is illegal under the 1986 McClure-Volkmer law, but that has apparently not stopped it from being done. If every gun in America has to go through a dealer, this will create a mechanism to compile a list of every gun owner in America. And, as we have seen with New York Governor Andrew Cuomo, who has just been legislatively handed such a list, when that happens, the talk immediately turns to “confiscation."

THREE: AS A RESULT, REQUIRING GOVERNMENT APPROVAL OF EVERY GUN OWNER IN AMERICA WOULD DO NOTHING BUT CREATE A PLATFORM FOR NATIONAL GUN REGISTRATION AND CONFISCATION.

As alluded to above, New York Governor Andrew Cuomo now has a comprehensive gun registry. This is the most dangerous thing that New York legislators could have done -- as Cuomo has made it clear he’s considering gun confiscation of lawfully-owned firearms.

“I don’t think legitimate sportsmen are going to say, ‘I need an assault weapon to go hunting,’” Cuomo said. “Confiscation could be an option. Mandatory sale to the state could be an option. Permitting could be an option -- keep your gun but permit it.”

How nice. He’ll let gun owners “permit” their guns for now -- so that, presumably, they can be confiscated later, just as certain defensive weapons were confiscated in New York City during the Mayor David Dinkins administration in 1991.

FOUR: THE FBI REFUSES TO COMPLY WITH THE LAW GUARANTEEING THE RIGHTS OF LEGITIMATE PURCHASERS

The Brady Law requires that the FBI correct erroneous denials of firearms purchases. And it requires that it reply, initially, within five days. According to attorneys familiar with the problem, the FBI NEVER, EVER, EVER complies with the law. In fact, it increasingly tells aggrieved legitimate purchasers to "sue us" -- at a potential cost of tens of thousands of dollars.

FIVE: EVEN UNDER CURRENT LAW, THE BRADY SYSTEM HAS BROKEN DOWN REPEATEDLY

Since its inception, the FBI’s computer systems have often gone offline for hours at a time -- sometimes for days. And when it fails on weekends, it results in the virtual blackout of gun sales at gun shows across the country.

According to gun laws expert Alan Korwin, "With the NICS computer out of commission, the only place you could legally buy a firearm -- in the whole country -- was from a private individual, since all dealers were locked out of business by the FBI’s computer problem."

Of course, now the President wants to eliminate that last bastion of freedom!

Recently, the FBI’s system went down on Black Friday, angering many gun dealers and gun buyers around the country. “It means we can’t sell no damn guns,” said Rick Lozier, a manager at Van Raymond Outfitters in Maine. “If we can’t call it in, we can’t sell a gun. It’s cost us some money.”

The bottom line: Our goal is to insure that Obama's politicized dog-and-pony show doesn't produce one word of new gun law. Not a single word.

And the biggest danger right now is universal background checks -- which would create a platform for national registration and confiscation.

We would note that, in addition, Obama is attempting to illegally enact gun control through unlawful and unconstitutional "executive actions." Click here to read about these.

ACTION: Click here to contact your senators and congressman. Urge them to oppose the universal background check because it is a platform for national firearms registration and confiscation

Very good article by Ms Coulter. Incidentally, anyone who has not read the story of the 1927 school bombing really should. really places things in a different light.

Regarding the MEDICAL parts of the 23 executive orders, speaking as both a physician and an avid shooter/combat arms practitioner, there is nothing in the 23 points that goes beyond common sense with the exception possibly of directing the CDC to study gun violence - and that could be fine if done even-handedly and could even be helpful, although I don't trust the CDC to do a balanced analysis on this issue. There is nothing in the wording that states that I as a family practice Dr HAVE to talk about guns, only that I am allowed to (which I do routinely on physical exams, especially for kids - reminding parents to secure arms and teach gun safety only makes sense). It is good to have a clarification that I am under no liability for reporting an obviously dangerous looney to the local PD - I am required to do it for unsafe driving, certainly should for truly obviously psychotic or violent patients. I tell you, living in a small town like I do, if I report such an individual can be a little nerve-wracking! Striving for parity of mental health services with other services is LONG overdue. Overall, I think the executive orders are mostly reasonably balanced. Less draconian than I anticipated. That is being left to Congress, I suppose.

My understanding is that one state (I believe Connecticut) has proposed that all people seeking to purchase a gun need a letter from a doctor stating they are of sound mind. That is nuts and I am opposed to it on multiple practical and theoretical grounds. That is not among the proposed executive orders.

One danger we run into as people defending the 2nd amendment is that there are those who are irrational in their beliefs on both side; when we irrationally attack rational proposals, we feed into the "gun nut" stereotypes. There are a lot of Americans out there with conflicted feelings on this issue. Alienating those who are attempting to be rational with Glenn Beck style rants and half truths doesn't help the cause. Remember that just because we disagree with it does not make a proposal irrational. There can be rational disagreement, in fact our system is built on it. Irrational responses and over-the-top hyperbole just makes gun owners appear to be the paranoid crazies the gun-phobics think we are. They are a lost cause. Its that large middle ground of Americans with mixed feelings on the issue we need to reach and show the light......

C Dr Dog

Correct me if I'm wrong, but under Obamacare, aren't all medical records supposed to be digital and accessed by the USG? Thus readily dataminable?

A Lefty Killer? Conservatives leave out part of the Christopher Dorner story..By JAMES TARANTO WSJ

Remember when liberal journalists and politicians tried to incite a moral panic by blaming a series of violent crimes on the Tea Party, Rush Limbaugh, Fox News and assorted other bugbears? If you don't, Michelle Malkin has a refresher:

The 2009 massacre of three Pittsburgh police officers (which lib journos falsely blamed on Fox News, Glenn Beck, and the "heated, apocalyptic rhetoric of the anti-Obama forces"); the 2009 suicide insurance scam/murder hoax of Kentucky census worker Bill Sparkman (which New York magazine falsely blamed on Rush Limbaugh, "conservative media personalities, websites and even members of Congress"); the 2009 Holocaust-museum shooting (which MSNBC commentator Joan Walsh blamed on Limbaugh, Bill O'Reilly, and yours truly); the 2010 Times Square jihad bomb plot (which Mayor Michael Bloomberg falsely blamed on tea-party activists protesting Obamacare); and the 2011 Tucson massacre, which liberals continue to blame on former GOP vice-presidential candidate Sarah Palin.Not all of these crimes were without political motive: The Pittsburgh and Holocaust Museum killers reportedly were white supremacists, and a "jihadi bomb plot" is political by definition. But the claim that conservative media figures or the Tea Party was somehow to blame was a scurrilous lie designed to stigmatize critics of the party in power.

The case of Christopher Dorner seems tailor-made for conservatives who would like to start a moral panic about left-wing violence--or just to enjoy a little payback. As the Los Angeles Times reports, Dorner, an erstwhile officer in the Los Angeles Police Department, "is wanted in connection with a double homicide in Irvine on Sunday and the shooting of three police officers, one fatally, in Riverside County on Thursday":

In an online manifesto attributed by authorities to Dorner, he ranted against Los Angeles Police Department personnel who he said fired him unfairly. He threatened revenge and "unconventional and asymmetrical warfare" against police and their families, saying he would stalk them "where you work, live, eat, and sleep."But the manifesto, which the LAPD issued with a request that "some names be redacted for safety reasons," also contains extensive commentary on politics and the news media. As Malkin's site Twitchy.com notes, some media have published only part of the manifesto, leaving out such gems as these:

• Dorner's statements in support of gun control ("Who in there right mind needs a f---ing silencer!!! who needs a freaking SBR AR15? No one"),• his attack on President Barack Obama's critics ("You question his birth certificate, his educational and professional accomplishments, and his judeo-christian beliefs"),• his adoration of First Lady Michelle Obama's hair ("I love your new bangs, Mrs. Obama"),• his admiration for Joe Biden ("I've always been a fan of yours and consider you one of the few genuine and charismatic politicians"),• his support for Hillary Clinton ("You'll make one hell of a president in 2016″),• his fondness for former President Bill Clinton ("He was always my favorite president"),• his confidence in San Antonio Mayor Julian Castro ("He's [good people] and I have faith and confidence in him"),• his love of MSNBC and CNN ("Chris Matthews, Joe Scarborough, Pat Harvey, Brian Williams, Soledad Obrien, Wolf Blitzer, Meredith Viera, Tavis Smiley, and Anderson Cooper, keep up the great work and follow Cronkite's lead"),• his criticism of the National Rifle Association ("Wayne LaPierre, President of the NRA, you're a vile and inhumane piece of sh--") ,• and his hatred of George Zimmerman ("Too bad Trayvon didn't smash your skull completely open, Zim").This list, however, also leaves out a few things that can be found in the version posted by Fox's Los Angeles station, KTTV, which seems to be complete except for the LAPD-requested redactions. Dorner praises several Republicans, including Gov. Chris Christie ("America's no sh-- talking uncle" and "the only person I would like to see in the White House in 2016 other than Hillary"), Jon Huntsman ("my choice of candidate" in 2012), George H.W. Bush ("you were always one of my favorite Presidents").

He voices regret over the resignation of David Petraeus: "You are human. You thought with your penis. It's okay." He urges gay activists to respect Chick-fil-A's "right to voice their beliefs," adding: "They make some damn good chicken!" And although he has cheers for the bumptious gun-hating CNN host Piers Morgan, he doesn't think much of one of Morgan's colleagues: "Revoke the citizenship of Fareed Zakaria and deport him."

There's also a lot of apolitical rambling about popular culture. All in all, Dorner comes across as a man of the center-left. He also comes across as deluded, among other things into thinking that others will find all this stuff interesting. But there's no indication his politics are related to the crimes he is suspected of committing.

On the other hand, it's hard to deny that Floyd Corkins had a political motive. CNN.com has his story:

He'd bought a gun and learned how to use it. He'd loaded three magazines. And he had stopped by Chick-fil-A to pick up 15 sandwiches, which he planned to smear in the dying faces of staffers he expected to kill at the Family Research Council in Washington.It would be a statement, he said, "against the people who work in that building," according to documents filed in U.S. District Court, where Corkins pleaded guilty on Wednesday to three charges related to the August shooting at the conservative policy group.Corkins told Judge Richard Roberts that he hoped to intimidate gay rights opponents.Corkins told the judge that, in CNN's words, he "had chosen the research council as his target after finding it listed as an anti-gay group on the website of the Southern Poverty Law Center":

The Southern Poverty Law Center has listed the Family Research Council as a hate group since 2010, pointing to what it describes as its anti-gay propaganda and legislative agenda.

On his nightly radio show on Wednesday, Family Research Council President Tony Perkins mentioned the plea deal and accused the Southern Poverty Law Center of playing a role in the shooting by inciting hatred and violence rather than fighting it--a claim he has repeatedly made since the shooting.

"The Southern Poverty Law Center is dangerous. They are inciting hatred, and in this case a clear connection to violence," he said on the radio broadcast. "They need to be held accountable, and they need to be stopped before people are killed because of their reckless labeling and advocacy for homosexuality and their anti-Christian stance."The SPLC's labeling of the FRC does not fit the legal definition of incitement, which requires both an intent to provoke lawless behavior and an imminent threat of such lawlessness. And the problem here isn't the SPLC's opposition to the FRC's policy agenda (which doesn't necessarily constitute "advocacy for homosexuality" or an "anti-Christian stance").

But it is shockingly irresponsible for the SPLC to apply the inflammatory label "hate group" so promiscuously. As we've noted, it is an institutional imperative for the center to overhype the prevalence of "hate groups," both by exaggerating the reach of actual ones and by falsely accusing groups like the FRC. If journalists want to encourage civility, a good place to begin would be by treating the SPLC with the skepticism, not to say scorn, it deserves.

He is an evil piece of garbage, unfortunately he is well trained and very dangerous.

I have been busy in Mexico. Very busy. I can actually say the same of anyone that has been subjected to years in the law enforcement environment. A good example of that would be the two unarmed women that were not threatening anyone and were fired upon repeatedly by the police. Last time I checked, it is our job to arrest people, not execute them. Maybe I missed the memo.

Well, not everyone can measure up to the high standards of Mexican law enforcement.

Maybe it is the amount of practice that we get. I am certain when we put thirty rounds downrange, we score more than two hits, especially against unarmed targets, if we were to shoot at unarmed targets... then again, that's kind of my question. Why would you? They have a problem identifying who it is they actually are shooting at before taking the safety off of their weapon, drawing a bead, and engaging? I particularly like how they said that was an accident. They should be up on attempted murder charges in all three shootings.

I gather that we are talking about the shots fired at the two women (one 70 years old?) delivering newspapers in the early morning under the delusion that they were Dorner?

In that this occurred two blocks from our house and right across from our son's school, I have followed this with some interest.

As I understand it, Dorner was reported to be in a dark Nissan pickup and these ladies were also in a dark pick up of a different brand. The cops apparently were set off by the fact that the ladies were stopping and going as part of the newspaper delivery process. It is not even clear that they gave warning before shooting. They admit to shooting 20-30 shots; there were some 24 shots in the truck itself, 5 shots in some neighbors door, 2 shots in an entirely different neighbors vehicle, and may well be stray shots elsewhere. One of the two women was hit twice in the back, but is expected to recover.

I dunno if attempted murder is the correct charge, but based upon current reports, these two officers showed extraordinarily poor judgment and lack of composure.

Since you're so smart.... "Graham's argument that it was error to require him to prove that the allegedly excessive force was applied maliciously and sadistically to cause harm, and holding that a reasonable jury applying the Johnson v. Glick test to his evidence could not find that the force applied was constitutionally excessive."

Do you mind explaining for those of us that aren't quite as bright as you are, what isn't "constitutionally excessive" about having 60+ rounds fired at you when you are working and minding your own business?

I don't know of the facts you refer, but if police know a law abiding citizen is minding his own business, posing no threat, and then fire 60+ rounds at him, it is excessive by every test. One round fired is excessive given only that information.

Mexico’s plague of police corruptionDespite millions in U.S. aid, forces continue to be outgunned, overwhelmed — and often purchased outright — by gangsters

DUDLEY ALTHAUS, HOUSTON CHRONICLE | October 18, 2010

Federal police officers stand in formation in June while drug-dealing suspects are presented to the media in Mexico City. The officers' faces are covered to protect their identities. Photo: Eduardo Verdugo, Associated Press

MEXICO CITY — City cops killing their own mayors; state jailers helping inmates escape; federal agents mutinying against corrupt commanders; outgunned officers cut down in ambushes or assassinated because they work for gangster rivals.

Six prison guards were killed Wednesday as they left their night shift in Chihuahua City, 200 miles south of El Paso. On Tuesday, the head of a police commander supposedly investigating the death of an American on the Texas border was packed into a suitcase and sent to a local army base.

Mexicans justifiably have long considered their police suspect. But today many of those wearing the badge are even more brazenly bad: either unwilling or unable to squelch the lawless terror that's claimed nearly 30,000 lives in less than four years.

State and local forces, which employ 90 percent of Mexico's 430,000 officers, find themselves outgunned, overwhelmed and often purchased outright by gangsters.

Despite some dramatic improvements — aided by U.S. dollars and training under the $1.6 billion Merida Initiative — Mexico's 32,000 federal police remain spread thin and hobbled by graft. And many in Mexico consider the American investment little help so far against the bloody tide wrought by drug gangs.

Grasping for a cure, President Felipe Calderon and other officials are pushing to unify Mexico's nearly 2,000 municipal police under 32 state agencies that they insist can better withstand the criminals' volleys of bullets and cash.

"The tentacles of organized crime have touched everyone," said Ignacio Manjarrez, who oversees public security issues for a powerful business association in Chihuahua, the state bordering West Texas that has become Mexico's most violent. "There are some who are loyal to their uniform and others who will take money from anyone and everyone.

"We let it into our society. Now we are paying the consequences."

Many actions, few results

Across Mexico, local, state and federal police forces have been purged, then purged again. Veteran officers and recruits alike undergo polygraphs, drug tests and background checks. A national database has been set up to ensure that those flushed from one force don't resurface in another.

Still the plague persists.

One of the surest signals that rivals are going to war over a community or smuggling routes are the dumped corpses of cops who start turning up dead. Many, if not most, of the officers are targeted because they work for one gang or the other.

Scores of federal officers rebelled this summer, accusing their commanders of extortion in Ciudad Juarez, the murderous border city that Calderon pledged to pacify. As a result, Mexican officials fired a tenth of the federal police force.

The warden and some guards at a Durango state prison were arrested in July after a policeman confessed in a taped gangland interrogation that they aided an imprisoned crime boss's nightly release so he could kill his enemies.

Another prison warden and scores of guards were detained in August following the breakout of 85 gangsters in Reynosa, on the Rio Grande near McAllen.

On Friday, the governor of Tamaulipas state, which borders South Texas, ordered the purging of the police force in the important port city of Tampico. Gov. Eugenio Hernandez said he took the action following officers' apparent participation in this week's brief abduction of five university students in the city.

$100 million a month

Mexico's top federal policeman, Genaro Garcia Luna, has estimated gangsters pass out some $100 million each month to local and state cops on the take.

"There really is no internal capacity or appetite to try to get their arms around corruption," said a former U.S. official with intimate knowledge of Mexico's security forces. "Anyone who sticks their head up, wanting to make a change, is eliminated."

Edelmiro Cavazos, mayor of Santiago, a picturesque Monterrey suburb, had vowed after taking office to clean up its police force, which many believe is controlled by the gangster band known as the Zetas.

He barely got the chance to try.

Killers came for him in August, arriving at his home on five trucks, a surveillance tape showing their headlights slicing the night like knives as his own police bodyguard waved them in.

A workman found Cavazos' blindfolded and bound body a few days later, tortured, shot three times and dumped like rubbish along a highway outside Santiago.

The bodyguard and six other officers from Santiago's police force are among those accused in the killing.

"They considered him an obstacle," the Nuevo Leon state attorney general said.

Following Cavazos' slaying and that of 600 others in the Monterrey area this year, Nuevo Leon Gov. Rodrigo Medina proposed bringing municipal police forces under unified state command.

"We have to act as a common front," Medina told reporters. "If we are divided in isolated forces and we have a united organized crime against us and society, we aren't going to be able to articulate the forceful response we need."

New command structure

The tiny western state of Aguascalientes created a unified police command this week. And Calderon won support for the plan Tuesday from 10 newly elected governors.

"Having institutions that enjoy the full confidence of the public can't be put off," Calderon told the new governors. "The single police command is a crucial element in achieving the peace and tranquility that Mexicans deserve."

Although small training programs for state and local forces exist, American dollars by way of the $1.6 billion Merida Initiative until now have been aimed mostly at Mexico's federal police.

Intelligence gathering and sharing has been enhanced and computer systems upgraded. U.S. and other foreign experts have given extensive training to a third of the federal force, officials say, with another 10,000 Mexican officers attending workshops.

"Beyond the money, the Merida plan put information and technology at the disposal of the Mexican government," said Manlio Fabio Beltrones, president of Mexico's senate, whose Institutional Revolutionary Party is widely favored to reclaim the presidency in 2012.

Its critics argue that the U.S. aid has failed to curtail the violence, leaving communities and local police forces at the mercy of gangsters.

Javier Aguayo y Camargo, a retired army general who was replaced as Chihuahua City's police chief this month, said no one has "figured out how to make the reforms work."

"The resources of Merida remain at the federal level," Aguayo y Carmargo said. "We haven't felt any of it. They need to support the states and municipalities."

Gangs reverse gains

Chihuahua City, capital of the state bordering West Texas, underscores just how quickly the drug wars have overpowered even the best attempts to strengthen local police.

Under a succession of mayors since the late 1990s, the city's police steadily improved. Hiring standards were raised, record keeping improved, arrest and booking processes overhauled. A citizen's oversight committee was set up with significant influence within the department.

Three years ago, the 1,100-officer force became the first in Mexico to be accredited by CALEA, a U.S.-based law enforcement association that rigorously evaluates police administrative standards. Only a handful of other Mexican cities have since won accreditation.

Then Mexico's gangland wars arrived in 2008.

The city of 800,000 has been racked this year by an average of four killings daily, according to a recent study by El Heraldo, the leading local newspaper, about 30 times more than a few years ago. It now ranks as Mexico's third most murderous city, behind Ciudad Juarez and Culiacan, capital of the gangster-infested state of Sinaloa, federal officials say.

Scores of city police officers have been fired for suspected corruption. More than two dozen others have been killed, either gunned down in street battles or assassinated by gangsters.

"If with all this equipment and training they are overwhelmed by the criminals, what happens in other places?" said Manjarrez, the businessman who monitors public security matters in Chihuahua. "As prepared as we were, we never saw this tsunami coming."

British hero of the mall massacre: Ex Royal Marine with a handgun saved 100 lives as terrorists ran amok Was having coffee at Westgate mall when it was attacked on Saturday He returned to building a dozen times despite intense gunfire Man, who can't be named for security reasons, was pictured with victims Gunfire heard early today despite Kenyan assurances mall had been secured 'At least 10 hostages still being held by a band of Al Shabaab militants'

Up to three American teenagers and one British person among terrorists

A former marine emerged as a hero of the Nairobi siege yesterday after he was credited with saving up to 100 lives.

The ex soldier was having coffee at the Westgate mall when it was attacked by Islamists on Saturday.

With a gun tucked into his waistband, he was pictured helping two women from the complex.

His story emerged as sporadic gunfire continued to ring out from inside the mall early today as Kenyan security forces battled Al Qaeda-linked terrorists into a fourth day.

Despite Kenyan police assurances that they had taken control of the building, a security expert with contacts inside the mall said at least 10 hostages were still being held by a band of attackers, possibly as many as 13.

Scroll down for video

Our saviour: The soldier, whose gun is circled, helps two women to safety. His identity has been protected for security reasons

So let's see the formula...a formula that is not new and has been seen many timesin the past. Sadly, I expect it will be seen again, because we in the western worlddon't learn from our mistakes. Instead, the western thought process likes to assignblame to the easiest target. Had this happened here, heaven forbid, I fully wouldexpect the media, and the authorities to blame the assault rifles, with the poor hapless terrorists being unwilling pawns controlled by the dastardly black rifles.

But in all seriousness, what do we have?

Islamic-linked terrorists (The media tripping over itself to not use the "I" word)Soft target of a shopping mall

Unarmed victims

Common threads in so many events that only those purposely not wanting to see it,will fail to see it. There is forthcoming evidence in fact that several of the tangosin Kenya are in fact - Americans according to the Kenyan Foreign Minister. She said the Americans were 18 to 19 years old, of Somali or Arab origin and lived"in Minnesota and one other place" in the United States. The British jihadist was a woman who has "done this many times before," Ms Mohamed said, adding tospeculation that it was the "White Widow", Samantha Lethwaite.

So where does that leave the western world as it will have to compromise somewhere?It will either compromise in its own self image and the myth of "egalitarian equality"with freedom and justice for all, or it will have to compromise the reality of safety by accepting and defending the rights of the very insurgency that wants its death.What choice it will make remains to be seen, but if we study the targetsthese people prefer, we may arrive at something.

SOFT TARGETS

Any place where ostensibly unarmed non-combatants congregate is a soft target. Soft targets are a favorite of terrorists and otherwise crazy people who want aneasy place to go do evil things. Witness Trolley Square, and now Nairobi, amongothers...even military bases! Schools, shopping centers, sports events, and similarare also favored.

The notion that "only the professionals" can handle such events may be true to a degree if all we think of is the marginally trained hobbyist with a pistol, butthat doesn't describe everyone. There are many in the ranks of the non-uniformedthat, while maybe going against twenty would be overly ambitious...going againstthree would not be. Specially if they are about to kill you!

Moreover, having come from the police community, I will easily burst the bubble of the uniformed and badged gunfighter as the percentage of people in that professionthat are highly skilled at arms is likely about the same as the private man orwoman who has chosen the development of skill at arms as their passion insteadof say, golf.

Be armed my friends...and ready.

Every place you set foot in, should automatically become a hard target because ofyour presence therein.

Columbine changed how law enforcement looked at potential threats and pushed most agencies into being proactive in addressing the potential for mass casualty homicides. Of course, this resulted in the cries of "militarization" from some.

Police officer executed in New Jersey, others being killed more than one at a time in Alaska, Vegas, Canada... and today, a bank robbery in Stockton where they threw two human shields thrown from the get-away vehicle, and the third shield shot and killed by the police in a shoot out with the robbers, the Bloods declaring war on the police, and most of that just in the last week.

I wonder how soon it is until the criminals in the United States figure out how to unite, and wage war simultaneously against authority and use military and torture tactics that more evolved criminals use in other countries, especially against soft targets? It's only a matter of time.

It was last tried in large numbers in the 60s/70s. It was the start of SWAT.

Thanks for the chuckle. They sound bullet and rocket proof. I know we aren't here in Mexico, but then, the US is so much more adept than we are here, probably due to the huge amount of practice you guys get up there.